Gary Cohn: Today’s temp workers are just as likely to be hired to fill blue collar jobs as office positions, with one major caveat: the new “temporary” hires who pick crops, pack vegetables or clean hotel rooms can work at those jobs for years at the same company — and with little or no advancement.

Gary Cohn: The effort to cut pensions in California is being closely watched by conservative activists nationwide, which is why its supporters seldom cease repeating the mantra that it’s a bipartisan effort.

Gary Cohn: San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and conservative activists are developing a ballot initiative to empower governments and voters in California to cut state and local public sector workers’ pension guarantees — not just new hires, but those who have been working for years under existing pension agreements.

Gary Cohn: While few budget experts would deny there are problems with funding public employee pensions, there is nothing resembling a consensus that supports the solutions proposed by Pew and the Arnold Foundation – whose warnings of imminent pension bankruptcy complement similar apocalyptic scenarios sketched by conservatives about Social Security’s future.

Gary Cohn: “Pension reform” has become the latest battle cry in a seemingly endless war that has ostensibly been declared against tax-dollar waste, but whose single-minded purpose has been to slash the job protections and benefits enjoyed by California’s working middle class.

Gary Cohn: A conservative legal organization that has pushed to overturn the 1964 Voting Rights Act filed a lawsuit in federal court in Santa Ana that could accomplish in the courts what Prop. 32 couldn’t at the ballot box.

Gary Cohn: California’s Enterprise Zone program has been under fire for years from critics who say that it simply rewards employers for moving jobs from one location to another — and who echo the charge that several of the so-called enterprise zones aren’t really in economically distressed regions.

Gary Cohn: The reasons for Los Angeles’ comparatively good financial condition include a legal groundwork laid years ago that required specific funding safeguards, recent give-backs from public sector unions and an improving economy.

Wellness

Carole Bartolotto: The problem with concluding that GMOs are safe is that the argument for their safety rests solely on animal studies. These studies are offered as evidence that the debate over GMOs is over. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Environmentalism

Margo McCall: There’s increasing evidence that adopting a plant-based diet is better for human health, the planet, and of course for the more than 9 billion animals that are killed for consumption each year in the U.S alone.